Castle of Glass
by Dood2super
Summary: Arya's trying to get some study time in, and the muffled Linkin Park isn't helping. Arya/Waif, Modern High School AU. T for some swearing.


She could hear it again. Arya had thought that insufferable woman would have learnt her lesson by now, and yet mere minutes after the helmet-haired girl came into the library and sat a few tables down to do her studying, the familiar sounds that accompanied her arrival floated down to where Arya was trying to read.

"CRAAAAAAAWLING IN MY SKIIIIIIIN!"

Of all the things she could have chosen to blast at a volume that surprisingly hadn't completely destroyed her eardrums yet, why did it have to be shit like that? The least she could do was turn up some music that was actually decent. You know, the stuff that Arya liked. Instead, the black-haired girl just groaned and tried to concentrate on her book. She had to hand it to her, making her want to get engrossed in her History of Westeros textbook was an admirable feat when it came to a girl like Arya. But if she had to make a choice between listening to a teacher drone on for an hour and a half and listening to the sounds of muffled Linkin Park in the distance, she knew exactly which one she'd take.

"MY WALLS ARE CLOSING IN!"

"Jesus, shut the fuck up." Arya said in her normal speaking voice, the ability to do so oddly satisfying. They were the only ones in the room right now, and with the object of her hatred unable to hear anything around her she could freely voice her insults as much as she wanted. A truly blissful scenario. Or at least, it would be, if Arya didn't have a test tomorrow and actually had to concentrate. She supposed she could just go somewhere else, but... Screw that. She was here first, she should be able to study in peace, and she was going to do something about it. "Hey! Turn your music off!" She called out, to an obvious lack of any reply. Sighing, Arya moved onto the plan B that she knew she'd have to take; ripping pages out of her notebook and scrunching them up into balls. It took a couple of attempts, since paper wasn't exactly the heaviest material on earth, but when she put an eraser in the ball she managed to hit her square in the head.

"Wha…!" She yelped as it hit her, immediately looking up in the direction the paper ball had come from as she pulled her headphones off of her head. Which was rather unfortunate, given the music was now even easier to hear. Arya got an antagonizing gaze her way as recognition covered the face shooting daggers her way. "Oh. It's you." She said, clearly not pleased with what had happened or who was insinuating it. That face brought great pleasure to Arya's selfish little heart.

"You bet it is, Waif. Now turn down your edge, we can all hear it." Arya retorted, making use of the time she had her attention. 'Waif', as she had so called her, was a name Arya had given that particular blonde from the day they had first met. A quick google search would confirm that it meant 'lost girl' or something like that in one ancient language or another; though the true reason she called her that was because she was convinced Waif had lost her marbles. "Your music's shit, by the way." Arya concluded, happy with how it had gone before she turned back to her own work. It was always her philosophy to get the last word in. Unfortunately, the music didn't stop. In fact, it only got louder, and louder, and...

The Waif plonked her textbooks and pencil case directly in front of Arya before pulling up a seat, getting comfortable as she sat down to do her work. The dark-haired girl visibly cringed at the revenge Waif had decided to exact; now she could hear every beat, every autotuned guitar strum, every horrible lyric, she could practically hear the rain falling behind the band. Because bands as edgy as the ones she was listening to obviously had to play in the middle of rainstorms.

"Oh, fuck off." Arya growled in the Waif's direction, speaking in an exaggerated form so that even if she couldn't hear her, she could easily read her lips. Waif merely shrugged, tapping on her headphones and looking apologetic. Almost as if to say 'I'm sorry, I can't hear you at the moment!' Which was kinda what she was saying, though the undertone was just one big middle finger pointed in Arya's direction. Miss High-and-Mighty Waif would never stoop herself to actually flipping her off, but she could always tell when she wanted to. Groaning, Arya glanced down at what Waif was working on. Religious studies. She should have guessed. Seemed to be focusing her research on the Many-Faced God; fitting, with Waif being a FUCKIN' TWO-FACED WHOREBAG. She hadn't actually done anything two-faced towards Arya, she just assumed that was one of her personality traits. There wasn't really anything Arya could do at this point aside from clocking her in the head right in the middle of the library, though, so she merely stuck her head in her book and tried to read. She almost felt relieved as she heard the sickening tones of Crawling end, before remembering there was no doubt another one coming in seconds. What was next? Numb? In The End? Maybe she'd crank up some Backstre…

Hang on. Arya knew this track. Those familiar notes, the progression, the lyrics that she could still easily understand… "Pendulum?" Arya questioned, glancing over at Waif, before remembering she was being shunned. She argued with herself for a few seconds, before reaching over and tapping Waif on the head. She looked up immediately, obviously not expecting Arya to go as far as touching her in this mostly verbal brawl. She looked like she was going to launch into another passive-aggressive tirade again, before the raven-haired girl who'd caught her attention mouthed the word again. Slowly, as she read her lips, Waif's expression went from a scowl to slight confusion. Reaching up, she slowly took her headphones off her ears.

"You... Listen to drum and bass?" She asked, clearly just as surprised about the situation as Arya was.

"Yeah, I actually, I do. That's Pendulum, right? Salt In The Wounds?" Arya asked, kinda interested now in what she was listening to. It wasn't often that she ran into others who listened to drum and bass music, even if Pendulum was probably the most mainstream of it all.

"Yes, it is, actually. I..." Waif started in reply, before apparently realizing how chummy she was getting with the girl she had come out of here to torment and turning back to her notes in silence. As silent as she could be with the headphones still blasting, though; but now that they were around her neck instead of on her ears, Arya could actually still get her attention verbally.

"That's cool. Personally, I like Apollo 440 more." She said, inciting another glance up from Waif. The blonde girl sighed, before pulling her phone out of her pocket and tapping it twice; with the headphones plugged into it, it wasn't long before a song from that very band was playing. "Wait, you listen to THEM to?" She confirmed, getting up out of her seat and zipping behind Waif before she could even react. Her iPod was full of the stuff; iTunes as well, not Spotify, so all this was actually purposefully on her phone. "Wow... I never expected to run into another Apollo fan here." Arya said, conflicted. On the one hand, meeting a fellow fan was pretty awesome; on the other hand, who that fan was was someone she had previously hated quite a bit. Waif shut off her phone, the music blasting through her headphones finally stopping as she put the phone back in her pocket and suddenly stood up.

"I'm... Gonna go." Waif said simply, packing up her books and hoisting them under her arm with a surprising amount of haste. She turned to Arya, seemingly about to say something before she stopped herself and rethought her options. "Listen to some Megachurch. They're… Really good." Waif recommended, obviously just as conflicted about the sudden shift in tone between the two of them as she pivoted on her foot, walking off and out of the room. Arya watched her walk away, quite a few thoughts floating through her head about what the hell had just gone down. But through all of that, there was one thought that held dominant above the rest.

Linkin Park was garbage.


End file.
